Young Greeks use Internet mostly for fun

Schools online but Web used little

By Apostolos Lakassas - Kathimerini

Neighborhood streets are full of Internet cafes. Young Greeks gather there to meet their friends and fellow pupils and to go online, which is handy, as not all Greek households have access to the Internet.

Greek youngsters use the Internet principally for entertainment. The boys prefer games, sports news and chatting to friends, while the girls seem to gravitate toward sites on astrology and gossip about actors and TV soap stars.

“You feel more free at an Internet cafe; you’re with friends, and nobody puts any pressure on you,” said one senior high school pupil in response to a recent survey.

The survey was run in connection with Mediappro, a European Commission-supported international project on how young people adopt the new media.

The Thessaloniki branch of the School of Pedagogical and Technological Education (ASPETE) surveyed 1,000 Greeks aged 12-18. ASPETE professor Sofia Aslanidou conducted the survey with associate professor Andrea Economou during the current school year. They gave questionnaires to 1,000 pupils from schools in Thessaloniki and Halkidiki and interviewed 26 pupils.

Given that Greece has been slow to embrace the Internet (only 2.46 percent of the population over 16 uses it, according to the National Statistics Service), the ASPETE survey shows that those missing out are parents and schools.

Typically, just 33 percent of junior and senior high school pupils in the Thessaloniki area have Internet access at home.

Meanwhile, despite the fact that nearly all schools are connected to the Internet, it is not used as a part of daily school routine. Of the sample, 59.4 percent had never used the Internet at school, and when they did it was to play games and for entertainment.

Greek youngsters go online to get information and entertainment — to chat, watch videos, listen to music and play games. And 45.8 percent of them could not say whether their teachers know how to use the Internet, which means that the teachers — apart from those that teach computer sciences — don’t use it in the classroom.

Greek youngsters are avid mobile phone users, and 96.5 percent of the sample owned one.

They said they used them to send text messages (82.6 percent), make phone calls (59.5 percent), play games (41.8 percent), and send images (34 percent).

Parents do not intervene, except to make sure the children don’t run up huge bills; 67.9 percent of the sample had card phones for that purpose.